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Morning News: New Ride-Sharing Alternatives for Travelers

You know Lyft and Uber, but many other alternatives exist for global travelers, Stephanie Rosenbloom reports for The Times.

“New ride-sharing alternatives—such as Via, Bandwagon, Tripda, and RideWith—are springing up in major cities and at airports,” Stephanie Rosenbloom reports, giving travelers new options that aren’t Lyft or Uber. (NYT)

Americans interested in traveling to Cuba have discovered yet another way to get there legally: by private yacht. If you don’t have your own vessel, “ferry companies and cruise lines hope to begin servicing the island soon, carrying in Americans traveling under auspices of the travel-ban exemptions,” Dudley Althaus reports. (WSJ)

Complicated rules and refund processing hassles have spawned a cottage industry of companies that advocate for air travelers (and keep a share of any compensation that they secure), Jane L. Levere reports. The inconvenience of getting compensation “has created an opening for companies like AirHelp, founded in 2013, and its competitors, which include AirRefund, Refund.me, FairPlane, and Flightright.” (NYT)

Hoteliers Liz Lambert, Chip Conley, and Amar Lalvani discuss the future of Standard Hotels and Bunkhouse Hotels, including a London property scheduled for 2017, the Tres Santos resort in Baja, and new hotels in “places like New Orleans and Nashville and maybe Portland.” (Skift)

Qatar Airways will deploy 10-across economy class seating on some aircraft, another sign that “ the gap between economy and business class (with its fully flat bed and direct aisle access) is growing,” John Walton writes. (RGN)

Novelist Eleni N. Gage worries that Lake Nicaragua, where “the government has approved construction of a 173-mile canal that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,” may be irrevocably changed by “silt from dredging the canal and pollution from freighter traffic.” (WSJ)

A disused fort in the tidal waters of the Solent, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, might be England’s most interesting new place to stay. (The Telegraph)